While the patient reclined, Mr. Melamid sat in a chair under a portrait of himself and took notes on a clipboard. He wanted to know specifics about the patient’s malady, and about any museums he had visited recently. Told that the patient had been looking at a lot of Whistlers, he nodded and said, “Not enough masterpieces.”

After a moment, he said: “This anxiety of yours is a very typical problem of modern man. And woman. And everything in between. My function is to help you see the right things.”

He went on to explain that a lot of visual information was bad for the patient. “So when you go to a museum,” he continued, “you have to be very discreet. You don’t want overexposure — that’s as dangerous as to take too many medicines. Art needs to be taken in moderation and according to a specialist who can prescribe the right dosage.”

Clicking through a series of paintings on the small computer screen, he stopped at a Cézanne and said: “If you have hay fever, you go to see Claude Monet, that’s for sure. For your problem I would recommend Paul Cézanne. When you go to the museum, don’t look around much. Go direct to Paul Cézanne. It’s very powerful painting, but in a way it’s also pacifying.”

According to news channel NY1, the clinic also offers “art water chargers” in which the water is charged by the artwork inside the bottle; “Botticelli water” and “Lichtenstein water” are both available.